Sure enough, he invited me to stay at his place. I told him straight away that I didn’t think that he ought to be looking at me as a romantic possibility for many reasons. I knew that he was upset and was looking for someone to hold him. But, I wasn’t really willing to be
Sure enough, he invited me to stay at his place. I told him straight away that I didn’t think that he ought to be looking at me as a romantic possibility for many reasons. I knew that he was upset and was looking for someone to hold him. But, I wasn’t really willing to be that person. I really didn’t mind consoling him and being the understanding woman. But, I have a lot of male friends and I realized just how men work. I’m not stupid, just caring. I checked the train schedules and found that in case I felt weary at any time, I could get to Copenhagen quite easily.
The next thing I knew, I was in a tiny Danish apartment cooking microwave popcorn. It turned out that he was a perfect gentleman from the moment that I met him and continued to be throughout my stay. He was a doctor there in Denmark but he was from the Czech Republic. Everyone in Denmark was on holiday, so we had everything to ourselves. We played tennis for free, rode bikes down the middle of the street and ate dinner in a big restaurant with nobody else in it. It was rather strange. It felt as though the whole town was deserted. Do you ever get this weird feeling that something happened while you were sleeping? Like, perhaps a bomb was dropped and somehow you didn’t know? Well, that is how I felt. All the yellow, red and blue painted houses were closed up tight.
The only people we saw were the random fishermen and a couple of policemen who warned us for not having lights on the bicycles after dark. I felt guilty leaving him two days later. I was sure that he would be lonely in that desolate town. However, I really had to keep on moving. I needed to get to be by myself.
Amsterdam in Denmark?
I spent the day in Copenhagen and found a very strange place that my Czech friend had told me about called Christiania. Apparently, some hippies had taken over the army barracks a while ago. Now, there was a village in the middle of a city. It was like a mini-Amsterdam. The main street was lined with vendors. First, I only saw the beautiful bright fabrics from around the world sparkling and shimmering in the sun. I smelled something and thought, “Wow! Someone’s smoking pot nearby. It reeks.”
I walked by a few more vendors and then, I noticed what was displayed on all the tables. Buckets of hash, marijuana and other stimulants, clearly labeled and displayed for sale. I began giggling in disbelief. I had never seen such a thing. It just really shocked me. I was dying to take pictures but I knew that it wasn’t a good idea. I had heard that if you took photos, they really got mad and sometimes destroyed the camera. So, I settled on buying a postcard of the place at one of the many organic food shops.
This place really was just a big hippie commune that had survived for an extra 30 years or so. It all felt so unreal. I couldn’t quite understand why it was that they were able to stay there and continue the way that they did without being thrown in jail. However, it all seemed to work, so I wasn’t about to shun their society.
Besides, these people had some pretty good ideas. They happen to manufacture the most ingenious looking bicycles I have ever seen. In Europe, a lot of people use bicycles as their primary form of transportation. Therefore, it also means that whenever they want to carry things around, they have to find a way of attaching something to their bicycle to hold it. For most, it’s a little basket above the rear wheel. But that only holds a small amount of goods.
The Christianians have taken the front wheel off and put a large box or carriage right in front of the rider. Then, in front of the box is the 2nd and/or 3rd wheel(s). It seemed to me the safest and most logical place for bike riders to have their kids as well as all their groceries. It’s so much easier to be sure that nothing falls out. I am constantly losing things out of the basket that sits behind me on my bicycle.
The only reason that I don’t see it catching on in America is because you cannot change the bicycle to a solitary bike. It always has the basket. Most Americans don’t use bicycles as their primary source of transportation. It would wind up being another thing that sits in the garage and never gets used I think. What a shame we are so lazy.